The CA Acquisition Of Runscope

02 Oct 2017

You won’t find me talking about the acquisition of API startups very often. I’m just not a fan of the game. I am not anti-venture capital, but I find the majority of investment in the API startup ecosystem works against everything we are trying to do with APIs. In my opinion, VC investment shouldn’t be the default, it should be an exception. There are other ways to build a business, and I see too many useful API tools get ruined while playing this game. With that said, I tend to not cover the topic, unless I get really pissed off, or the occasional investment or acquisition that I feel will result in a positive result.

Last week we saw the Runscope acquisition by CA. This is an acquisition that doesn’t leave me concerned. Runscope is a partner of mine, run by people I know and care about, and they offer a tool that is useful in the API sector. If they’d had been acquired by many other bigcos I would have been more concerned, or even upset (if it had been certain ones). However, I have experience with CA, and while they are an enterprise beast, I’ve seen them make acquisitions before that weren’t damaging to the services and tooling they acquired. I trust that CA isn’t acquiring Runscope to just eliminate a strong player from the sector, and that they are actually interested in what Runscope does.

I have seen CA’s role in the API space through the lens of the API Academy team, as well as through public and private conversations with other CA employees, on a variety of other teams. I’ve gone on-site and participated in API training session, and I have seen evidence that CA is invested in helping evolve their enterprise to be an API aware organization. Something that you can see reflected in how they approach doing business with their customers. I’m currently working to help move forward some API curriculum with the API academy team, which wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t feel they were committed to helping invest in API literacy across the API space.

The CA acquisition of Runscope doesn’t leave me nervous. I feel like it is a good match. Also, despite the CEO of Runscope, John Sheehan and I often butting heads about startup and VC culture, I feel like he has played the game in an honest and respectful way. He’s made the best choices he could have as a CEO in this game. He cares about making a high quality, useful API product. He genuinely cares about the API space. Even though I think he loves the startup and investment game a little more than he should. All of this leaves me without the indigestion that API startup investment and acquisitions usually leaves in my stomach. I don’t feel like we are losing yet another valuable tool. I feel like CA will be a good steward of Runscope, and the team will actually get the opportunity to evolve, grow, and do better things.